AFNetworking 2.0 multipart request body blank

Question

Similar to this issue.

Using AFNetworking 2.0.3 and trying to upload an image using AFHTTPSessionManager\'s POST + constructingBodyWithBlock. For reasons unknown, it se

Answer 1

Rob is absolutely right, the problem you're seeing is related to the (now closed) issue 1398. However, I wanted to provide a quick tl;dr in case anyone else was looking.

First, here's a code snippet provided by gberginc on github that you can model your file uploads after:

NSString* apiUrl = @"http://example.com/upload";

// Prepare a temporary file to store the multipart request prior to sending it to the server due to an alleged
// bug in NSURLSessionTask.
NSString* tmpFilename = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%f", [NSDate timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate]];
NSURL* tmpFileUrl = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:[NSTemporaryDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:tmpFilename]];

// Create a multipart form request.
NSMutableURLRequest *multipartRequest = [[AFHTTPRequestSerializer serializer] multipartFormRequestWithMethod:@"POST"
                                                                                                   URLString:apiUrl
                                                                                                  parameters:nil constructingBodyWithBlock:^(id formData)
                                         {
                                             [formData appendPartWithFileURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:filePath]
                                                                        name:@"file"
                                                                    fileName:fileName
                                                                    mimeType:@"image/jpeg" error:nil];
                                         } error:nil];

// Dump multipart request into the temporary file.
[[AFHTTPRequestSerializer serializer] requestWithMultipartFormRequest:multipartRequest
                                          writingStreamContentsToFile:tmpFileUrl
                                                    completionHandler:^(NSError *error) {
                                                        // Once the multipart form is serialized into a temporary file, we can initialize
                                                        // the actual HTTP request using session manager.

                                                        // Create default session manager.
                                                        AFURLSessionManager *manager = [[AFURLSessionManager alloc] initWithSessionConfiguration:[NSURLSessionConfiguration defaultSessionConfiguration]];

                                                        // Show progress.
                                                        NSProgress *progress = nil;
                                                        // Here note that we are submitting the initial multipart request. We are, however,
                                                        // forcing the body stream to be read from the temporary file.
                                                        NSURLSessionUploadTask *uploadTask = [manager uploadTaskWithRequest:multipartRequest
                                                                                                                   fromFile:tmpFileUrl
                                                                                                                   progress:&progress
                                                                                                          completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, id responseObject, NSError *error)
                                                                                              {
                                                                                                  // Cleanup: remove temporary file.
                                                                                                  [[NSFileManager defaultManager] removeItemAtURL:tmpFileUrl error:nil];

                                                                                                  // Do something with the result.
                                                                                                  if (error) {
                                                                                                      NSLog(@"Error: %@", error);
                                                                                                  } else {
                                                                                                      NSLog(@"Success: %@", responseObject);
                                                                                                  }
                                                                                              }];

                                                        // Add the observer monitoring the upload progress.
                                                        [progress addObserver:self
                                                                   forKeyPath:@"fractionCompleted"
                                                                      options:NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew
                                                                      context:NULL];

                                                        // Start the file upload.
                                                        [uploadTask resume];
                                                    }];

And secondly, to summarize the problem (and why you have to use a temporary file as a work around), it really is two fold.

1. Apple considers the content-length header to be under its control, and when a HTTP body stream is set for a NSURLRequest Apple's libraries will set the encoding to Chunked and then abandon that header (and thereby clearing any content-length value AFNetworking sets)
2. The server the upload is hitting doesn't support Transfer-Encoding: Chunked (eg. S3)

But it turns out, if you're uploading a request from a file (because the total request size is known ahead of time), Apple's libraries will properly set the content-length header. Crazy right?